Phone Booth (film)

Stuart Shepard is an arrogant and dishonest New York City publicist who has been planning an affair with a client, Pamela McFadden, behind the back of his wife Kelly. While in Times Square, Stuart uses a public phone booth to contact Pamela, allowing him to avoid detection by Kelly. During the call, he is interrupted by a pizza delivery man who attempts to deliver a free pizza to him, but Stuart aggressively turns him away. As soon as Stuart completes his call, the phone rings. Stuart answers; a man on the other end, who knows his name, warns him not to leave the booth, threatening to tell Kelly about Pam. The caller tells Stuart that he has tested two previous individuals who have committed crimes (pedophilia and corporate corruption) using the same process, giving each a chance to reveal the truth to those they wronged. In both cases, they refused and were killed. Stuart must confess his feelings to both Kelly and Pam to avoid the same fate. To demonstrate the threat, the caller fires a suppressed sniper rifle with pinpoint accuracy. The caller then contacts Pam and connects her to Stuart, who admits he is married. The booth is approached by three prostitutes demanding to use the phone, but Stuart refuses to leave, without revealing his dilemma. Leon, a pimp, breaks the glass side of the booth, grabs Stuart and pummels him while the prostitutes cheer. The caller offers to "make him stop" and in Stuart's confusion, he inadvertently asks for this; the caller shoots Leon dead. The prostitutes immediately blame Stuart, accusing him of having a gun, as the police and news crews converge on the location. NYPD Captain Ed Ramey seals off the area and negotiates to make Stuart leave the booth, but he refuses. Stuart tells the caller that there is no way they can incriminate him, but the caller draws his attention to a handgun planted on the roof of the phone booth. As Kelly and Pam both arrive on the scene, the caller demands that Stuart tell Kelly the truth, which he does. The caller then orders Stuart to choose between Kelly and Pam, and the woman he does not choose will be shot. Stuart secretly uses his cell phone to call Kelly, allowing her to overhear his conversation with the caller; she quietly informs Ramey of this. Meanwhile, Stuart continues to confess to everyone that his whole life is a lie, to make himself look better than he really is. Stuart's confession provides sufficient distraction to allow the police to trace the payphone call to a nearby building. Stuart warns the caller that the police are on the way, and the caller replies that if he is caught, he will kill Kelly. Desperate, Stuart grabs the handgun and leaves the booth, begging for the sniper to kill him instead. The police fire upon Stuart, while a SWAT team breaks into the room that the caller was tracked to, only to find a rifle and a man's corpse. Stuart regains consciousness; the police had fired only rubber bullets, stunning but not harming him. Stuart and Kelly happily reconcile. As the police bring down the body, Stuart identifies it as the pizza delivery man from earlier. Stuart gets medical treatment at a local ambulance. After getting a shot from a paramedic, he starts losing consciousness. The real caller passes by, warning Stuart that if his newfound honesty does not last, he will return, before disappearing into the crowd, while the pay phone rings again. ==Cast==

• Colin Farrell as Stuart "Stu" Shepard, a selfish and dishonest publicist who becomes a victim of a mysterious caller who threatens to kill him • Kiefer Sutherland as The Caller, an unnamed, malevolent, scheming killer and trained sniper who calls Stu in the phone booth and holds him hostage • Forest Whitaker as Capt. Ed Ramey, a police captain who gives assistance to Stu in his conflict against The Caller, but suspects him as the killer • Katie Holmes as Pamela "Pam" McFadden, Stu's mistress • Radha Mitchell as Kelly Shepard, Stu's wife • Paula Jai Parker as Felicia • Tia Texada as Asia • John Enos III as Leon • Richard T. Jones as Sergeant Jonah Cole • Keith Nobbs as Adam • Josh Pais as Mario • Ben Foster as "Big Q" (uncredited) • Jared Leto as Bobby (in a deleted scene) ==Production==

Development and casting In the 1960s, Larry Cohen pitched Alfred Hitchcock an idea for a film which took place in real-time, entirely within the confines of a telephone booth. Hitchcock liked the idea, but the project did not move forward, because the two men were unable to devise a plot which explained why the action had to be restricted to one location. Cohen recalled that Hitchcock would ask him if he had a solution to the problem when they periodically met over the following years, but it was not until the late 1990s, some two decades after Hitchcock's death, when he came up with the answer of a sniper forcing the protagonist to remain within the phone booth, and was able to write a script. For the film, Irish lead Colin Farrell used a fake Bronx-style American accent, with his on-screen wife (played by Australian Radha Mitchell) also using a fake American accent for the film. During this period, Farrell was noted for his versality with accents, since he also created a fake Southern accent for 2000's Tigerland and a neutral American accent for 2002's Minority Report. The filming was done with Ron Eldard cast in the role of The Caller. During filming, Eldard delivered his performance from the window of a building across the street from the phone booth Farrell was in. The role was recast with Kiefer Sutherland after screenwriter Cohen told director Schumacher that Eldard's "voice lacked the mesmerizing tone" that Cohen wanted. Sutherland rerecorded all of The Caller's lines for use in the final film. The film is set in real time, so the timespan in which the film takes place is as long as it takes to watch it, much like the television series 24, which also stars Kiefer Sutherland. Like 24, it also uses split screens. Although the film is set in New York City, it was filmed in front of what is now the CB1 Gallery in downtown Los Angeles, in November 2000. This is made evident by the LACMTA buses periodically driving by. The exact location of the phone booth in the film is the corner of West 5th Street and Frank Court, given away by the black gate in the background. ==Release==

Theatrical The film premiered on September 10, 2002, at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was originally due to be released in the United States on November 15 of that year. However, in October 2002, the Beltway sniper attacks occurred in the Washington, D.C., area, prompting 20th Century Fox to delay the release of the film to April 4, 2003. Home media and rights In the U.S., 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released it on VHS and DVD on July 8, 2003. In the United Kingdom (Region 2) it was released on DVD by Fox on August 11, 2003. The film also received an Australian (Region 4) VHS/DVD release on November 12, 2003, from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment South Pacific. In February 2007, Fox released the movie on Blu-ray. In 2019, Rupert Murdoch sold most of 21st Century Fox's film and television assets to Disney, and Phone Booth was one of the films included in the deal. Disney made it available to stream on Hulu, one of the additional assets they acquired from Fox in 2019. In certain territories without Hulu, it was made available on the streaming service Disney+. ==Reception==

Box office The film grossed $46.5 million in the United States and $51.3 million internationally for a total gross of $97.8 million, from a $13 million production budget. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on scale of A+ to F. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four stars, and said of Sutherland's performance, "if the voice doesn't work, neither does the movie. It does." Todd McCarthy of Variety magazine criticized the film for not having enough material even for its relatively short length, and wrote: "Gussied up with a host of filmmaking tricks in an attempt to keep things lively, this intensely acted little exercise just doesn't have enough going for it, with the exception of gradually growing interest in lead Colin Farrell." ==See also==